PLEASE help me troubleshoot my PC.

[tbird2340]

Ok... I'm on my last nerve with my pc here..... I've done everything I can think of and it's still bombin on me.. Let me start from the beginning and please read because I need some advice. About 6 months ago my PC went on the bling.. At the time I was very busy getting married so I didn't have time to mess with it. Once things settled down I tried formatting and installing XP Pro. I kept getting file copy errors when installing the OS. Thinking it may have been the HDD I ran a scan disk in DOS and it found bad sectors. So I got a new HDD and tried again. It happened again, copy errors instaling the OS. I called ASUS who is my mobo manufacturer and told him all I did. He thought it was the mobo so I sent it back. I got a new one mobo and the same thing happened. So I tried pulling out one of my memory chips. That seemed to be the problem because I was able to get the OS installed completely and it ran fine for a couple days. I went home one day to boot it up and it kept getting "cannot find keyboard or keyboard error". I tried a diff keyboard and same thing happened. Mouse wouldn't work either (it's optical and it wasn't lighting up). I plugged the mouse into the USB instead and it did light up so I suspected the PS/2 ports were shot on the mobo. Called ASUS and told them and so I got yet another one (by the way.. Asus got the old one and said it worked fine for them but they replaced it anyways). In the meantime I got my replacement chip of Mushkin memory. So now I have a new board, new HDD, and one stick of new memory. I'm thinkin I'm in like flyn. It worked great for like 2 weeks then it started acting all weird again. It would just reboot randomly or it would not get into Windows the first couple boots. Once in Windows sometimes it would work fine (I would play a game for couple hours) and sometimes right when I clicked on Winamp or IE it would reboot. It constantly got worse where I would have to go into safe mode first, then reboot back into normal mode. Then it got so bad that that wouldn't even work. I tried pulling out Nic, modem, and still couldn't even get into windows. So I tried pulling out my other stick of memory (not the new one) and it worked. It worked fine for a couple days but every once in a while in windows explorer it would hang for like 3 minutes spiking the CPU @ 99%. I since got the new chip (yesterday) and installed it. I brought it to work today to experiment. It was working fine for a while but just rebooted itself when I went into UT2003. Can anyone think of something I may be missing. The only things I haven't replaced are the CPU and PSU. Basically everything else is brand new!!?!?! PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tbird2340]

Sorry, here's my specs:

Jet Black Antec SOHO SX1030 File Server Case - 330W PSU
AMD Athlon 1.2 GHZ Chip w/ AlphaHO Fan & Heatsink
ASUS A7A266 Mobo
512 MB (2 256MB Chips) Mushkin DDR 2100 Memory
IBM Deskstar 40GB ATA100 Hard Drive
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Sound Card
GeForce 4 Ti4200 64MB Video Card
3Com 10/100 Nic
Creative Labs 52 X CDRom
Plextor 12x10x32 CDRW

[nukes]

Get sisoft sandra and see if that will run ok
www.sisoft.com

[Darthv15]

Hey TBird, your problem sounds a lot like one I had with a build of mine. I did everything you did, replaced everything you described and the last thing I replaced was the Processor. That turned out to be the problem. I was running an ECS Board with an Athon 1.33 GHZ. When trying to install windows I was getting errors and when I finally did get it installed it was doing the random reboots that you describe. This probably isn't what you wanted to hear but hopefully it helps you out.

[tbird2340]

Hey nukes... What tests should I do in sisoft??

Darthv15, did you run any CPU benchmarking before you replaced it to confirm that it was the CPU??

Thanks for the replies!

[tbird2340]

OK. I just ran Sisoft burn in wizard for my CPU and looped it 5 times. It ran OK with no reboots. Does that mean the CPU is ok or what?? Are they any progs or tests I can do for my PSU??

[RamonGTP]

Because your problem is so intermittant, its impossible to tell weather or not the CPU is ok based on those tests. At this point, I'd have to say the problem is one of two things, the CPU or as you mentioned, the PSU... Unfortunatly though taking either one of those pieces to someplace to get tested isn't practical, becuase like you said, it at times works fine for a couple weeks. You'll probably need either an extra CPU or PSU to be able to adequately test it.

[Comtech]

Coff, Coff...didn't I tell you that in your other post's on that other BBS?

[Darthv15]

Nope TBird I didn't run any benchmarks on the CPU. I did the best thing to troubleshoot it, I threw in a different CPU (borrowed from a friend). This solved all the problems I was having so I went out a bought a Athlon XP 1600.